Geodrill Ltd

TSX:GEO

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q4

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. [Operator Instructions] I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded on Monday, March 2 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard time and is being broadcast live via the Internet. During today's call, management will make statements regarding management's expectations for the company's future financial and operational performance. These statements are considered forward-looking statements. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this call, and actual results may differ materially from management's expectations for a variety of reasons, including market and general economic conditions and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the company's SEDAR filings. I would now like to turn the call over to the President and CEO of Geodrill Limited, Mr. Dave Harper.

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and welcome to Geodrill's 2019 Q4 and Fiscal Year-end Financial Results Conference Call. I'll begin with an overview of our achievements and performance for the year. Our CFO, Greg Borsk, will then give a more detailed review of our fiscal year-end financial results, after which I'll discuss our outlook for the remainder of H1 2020. In 2019, we further demonstrated the fundamental strength of our business. We delivered consistent, steady revenues and strong net earnings despite a militant attack in Burkina Faso that killed 2 of company's employees and significantly impacted activity in that country. It followed that in the aftermath of the attack, we were also unable to redeploy the affected rigs onto other projects due to the ongoing security situation in the area, which, in turn, further adversely affected production and, therefore, revenues in the fourth quarter. Despite these disruptive events, we managed to deliver solid financial results, which is a testament to the resilience of our business model. 2019 in retrospect was a year of many achievements. We generated net income of $3.8 million, representing a 485% year-over-year increase. We also secured significant multi-rig contracts across multiple jurisdictions. We generated net cash of USD 14.7 million from operations. We decreased our total debt to $3.4 million, resulting in industry-leading debt-to-equity ratio of 5%. And importantly, we ended the year with net cash of USD 7.2 million, which is a remarkable, remarkable achievement. In general, we believe our success is driven by our strategy of high-performance, high-value offering backed by decades of experience as a drilling company. And this is what sets us apart from our competition. I'll now turn the call over to Greg to discuss our fiscal 2019 financial year-end and performance in more detail.

[Gregory Borsk, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you, Dave. The company's revenue for fiscal 2019 decreased slightly to $87.4 million, a decrease of 1% when compared to $88.5 million for fiscal 2018. The decrease was the result of the disruptive and challenging operating environment in Burkina Faso, as Dave mentioned. One of the company's clients in Burkina suspended all exploration activities throughout the fourth quarter, which resulted in a decline in revenue. Additionally, the company drilled less meters and had a different mix of meters drilled in 2019 compared to 2018. The gross profit for fiscal 2019 was $22.2 million, being 25% of revenue, compared to a gross profit of $22.5 million, being 25% of revenue for fiscal 2018. Despite slightly less revenue, the company was able to maintain a consistent 25% gross profit margin. The company was also able to increase its EBITDA and EBITDA margin in 2019. EBITDA for fiscal 2019 was $20 million, being 23% of revenue, compared to $16.3 million or 8% of revenue for fiscal 2018. The net income for fiscal 2019 was $3.9 million or $0.09 per share compared to net income of only $700,000 or $0.02 per share for 2018. The company also significantly strengthened the balance sheet. At December 31, 2019, the company had cash of $10.6 million and debt of only $3.4 million, resulting in net cash of $7.2 million. At this point, I will turn the call back to Dave.

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

Thank you, Greg. Before we move to the Q&A portion of the call, I'd like to provide a brief outlook for H1 2020. Our outlook is the strongest it's been in years. Bolstered by the strongest gold price we've seen in 7 years, we continue to see a recovery in the global mining industry and a significant increase in exploration spend, which is driving a strong operating environment, improved pricing and strong utilization. As a result of our trusted relationships with our customers, our unique service offering and a track record of meeting our commitments in operational excellence, 2020 is shaping up to be a strong year for winning new business, including the junior exploration market. We continue to build on our proven strategy. We are also excited by new – a number of new opportunities that are currently presenting themselves across the business. Our experienced financial discipline and solid balance sheet will provide us with the strong foundations to explore these growth opportunities with the ultimate aim of continuing to deliver unique value to our customers and in turn providing higher returns to our shareholders. Finally, as I come to the end of our prepared remarks, I'd like to just add a little bit more color to the militant attack, which disrupted our fourth quarter. But firstly, let me begin by extending again our condolences to the family of the 2 loyal employees, both killed in this senseless attack. Burkina Faso, averagely speaking, speaks for 25% to 30% of our Q4 revenues. So we can extrapolate and say that this resulted in an immediate loss of $4 million in revenues, an additional $2 million in EBITDA that we did not see and probably $0.02 in earnings, okay? So the takeaway here is that absent these disruptive events, Geodrill was trending to chalk up yet another record year with estimated revenues of $91 million, $22 million in EBITDA, $4 million -- $4.8 million in net earnings or USD 0.12. Instead, we were flat on revenue, we did $20 million in EBITDA and net earnings of $3.8 million, which in the circumstances are still very, very good results, we believe. That's the big takeaway. The other big takeaway is that from Geodrill's perspective is the speed with which the team, team Geodrill, were able to respond and redeploy its effective rigs on to other jobs. This certainly came with logistical challenges, but we got it done. And now all the rigs are working again. And that we were able to do this with minimal commercial disruption, we believe, speaks volumes with regards to the strength of the business. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for participating on today's call. We will now pass back to the operator, and at this point, anybody would like to ask a question. Thanks very much.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Daryl Young from TD Securities.

[Daryl Young, Mining Research Associate]

Just in terms of the outlook, you'd mentioned that this was looking like one of the best years ever. Is that related to contracts that you've already signed and you started drilling for, for this year? Or maybe if you could just provide a little bit of color on to where that positive outlook is coming from.

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

So it's basically just -- it's just a continuation of the tail end of last year. We had a very robust business environment. Things like utilization was strong, revenues were strong, average revenues per ship were strong. And evidently, the markets were improving, as I was pointing out on the call, with a -- was at a $1,600-odd gold price and rising. We're seeing a lot more activity, all of our customers. I'm here for PDAC this week in Toronto, and I've been to 3 presentations and all presentations are talking about growing their businesses through the drill bit. So it's looking busy for us and for the industry in general, I think.

[Gregory Borsk, Chief Financial Officer]

And just to add on that, Daryl. Also if you can see consistent gross margin year-over-year, 25%, so that's a very strong margin. And if you look at 2019 versus 2018, we also took a lot of SG&A costs out of the system. So just shaping up to be a much better year financially also.

[Daryl Young, Mining Research Associate]

Okay. And then on pricing and competitive dynamics, would you say pricing is starting to shift into your favor? Or are we sort of flattish on pricing?

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

Flat to improving, Daryl, as the needle -- the international needle for utilization moves closer to 50%, which I believe, historically, is the inflection point for pricing. We're evidently coming off a few years of lows. And so it is moving in the right direction but not as quickly as I would like, but it's evidently moving in the correct direction, yes.

[Daryl Young, Mining Research Associate]

Okay. And then in terms of the rigs that were redeployed, the Burkina Faso rigs, are they redeployed in Burkina Faso? Or have they moved into new jurisdictions?

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

A bit of -- some -- a bit of both. Half of the fleet, the effective fleet is effectively working in Burkina Faso and about half of the Burkina Faso fleet is being moved on to other jobs in other jurisdictions for other customers.

[Daryl Young, Mining Research Associate]

But Burkina Faso will continue to be a part of the focus going forward.

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

Absolutely. The attack that occurred was in an isolated place in Burkina Faso and the rest of Burkina Faso, in our view, remains open for business. And in fact, even where the attack occurred, provided certain measures are taken for us to safely work there, we would be happy to work at that particular location as well. What we need to do is just increase our awareness and our approach to how we would address working at that particular location. Yes, Burkina is open for business. Very much a big part of our business, it speaks for 25% to 30%, and at times, 50% of our business. So it's not -- it's certainly not a business model that we can sort of ignore. It's a big chunk of what we do. And our customers there tell me, we need to make sure that our customers are serviced. We have customers that operate in Burkina as well as other countries, and it's really about providing that overarching all-inclusive service across the West Africa region.

[Operator]

We have no further questions. I turn the call back over to the presenters for closing remarks.

[David Michael Harper, President, CEO & Director]

Okay. Thank you.

[Gregory Borsk, Chief Financial Officer]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.